Braverman must go now: time to end hostile environment and abolish racist Home Office
The Scottish Greens have called for Suella Braverman to be sacked, and have condemned the appalling conditions in migrant processing centres and the Home Office’s racist approach to migration and refugees.
The party has called for the Home Office to be abolished and its responsibilities distributed to other government departments in an effort to move past the culture of racism and hostility which has come to define its approach under successive UK Governments.
It comes as the Home Secretary also admits to at least six security lapses around the use of her personal emails and sharing highly sensitive government information.
Scottish Greens external affairs spokesperson Ross Greer MSP said:
“Time and again the Home Office has shown that it is completely unfit for purpose, and that it must finally be scrapped.
“Its incompetence is matched only by its cruelty. Vulnerable people should not be 'welcomed' to Britain with cramped, overcrowded prison-like conditions, let alone having to spend months stuck in them.
“The Home Office has shown that it cannot be trusted to ensure the welfare of refugees, particularly pregnant women and children. Nor can the UK Government, which has deliberately developed a brutal and inhumane ‘hostile environment’ policy that has been grounded in malice and has fanned the flames of extremism.
“At the centre of this is a Home Secretary who has leaked left, right and centre, broken the Ministerial Code and spoken of her ‘obsession’ with cruel deportation flights. If Rishi Sunak wants to emerge from this with any semblance of dignity, then must sack Braverman immediately.
“But the issue is far greater than the current Home Secretary. Much of the infrastructure for Home Office racism was built under her predecessors, both Tory and Labour. It is not just the Home Office that has been at fault, it has been the entire Westminster system.
“In years to come, people will look back at the terrible way the Home Office has treated other human beings, and they will be appalled.
“With independence we could take a different path and build a fairer, more welcoming Scotland. With the powers of a normal country we could welcome refugees and end the prison-like conditions and dawn raids that far too many have been subjected to.”